When you hold your breath you emit less oxygen in you wind and you blow
"slowly". The point of holding your breath is to smother the flame and
the glowing wick so that it does not continue to smoke after the fire is
out.

This is the only good advice you've gotten. The air inside the can is
enough to skin over the paint. Kitchen plastic wrap pushed down into the
can, touching the entire surface of the paint will keep air away from
the paint... then cap the can with the lid.
Works great on ice cream, too, to keep it from crystallizing or getting
freezer burn on the surface.

Air passes through plastic sheet generally less than 4mm thick, but as a gasket
I don't think this applies.
I solve the "air in paint can" problem by filling the can up with glass marbles
to take up the space. I used to do this in my darkroom for my photo chemicals,
but thats long gone! Glass of course doesn't react with the paint, and they
stay on the bottom. A bonus is as you shake the can, they stir the paint! (Hold
the lid on...)
The only problem at the beginning was raiding enough toy stores to get a gallon
of marbles! The dollar store was a good find!
See the pic of my cleaned marbles drying on the stove top at
Alt.binaries.photos.original

You don't need to visit toy stores. Search the web for "marbles wholesale"
Here's one place that sells about 500 5/8" marbles for $28 (500=half-gallon)
(smaller assortments available).
http://www.landofmarbles.com/marble-sets-and-assortments.html
Apparently the marble business is highly competitive...

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